Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Rancic's L.A. Rental Goes Up for Sale

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: If inclined, the children can thank a friendly informant we'll call Brenda Wood for alerting Your Mama to an East Coast-y Cape Cod crib in the leafy and affluent Brentwood area of Los Angeles, CA currently on the market with an asking price of $2,395,000.

Property records we peeped show the rather charming residence has been owned since 2003 not by a celeb but a prominent West Side real estate agent. This is where eagle-eyed Brenda Wood comes in: She recognized the modestly-scaled but decidedly-upscale and certainly pricey property as the (rented) home of reality television stars Giuliana and Bill Rancic.

Easy-going property developer and motivational speaker Mister Rancic—who has some of the whitest teeth we've ever laid eyes on—won the first season of The Apprentice back in 2004 and exceedingly slender Missus Rancic (née DePandi) has long been an on-camera celebrity news correspondent who currently, along with her numerous other gigs, co-hosts the sassy and snarky Fashion Police program with perennially funny (and nasty) Joan Rivers, rock-n-roll scion Kelly Osbourne, and celebrity stylist George Kotsiopoulos.

For the last several Mister and Missus Rancic have laid bare their lives for the world to see on their eponymous reality tee-vee program Giuliani & Bill. Anyone who tuned in watched the couple—no doubt with both genuine sympathy and utter mortification—navigate the perils of a new(ish) marriage, grapple with infertility and cope with breast cancer and a double mastectomy. The icing on their cake is that Mister and Missus Rancic don't work in the same city. He's Chicago-based and she's L.A.-based. Imagine the frequent flyer miles. Last week it was announced—it seems almost every detail and drama of their bumpy lives is either disclosed or announced—the couple is with-child via a gestational surrogate and are expecting a bouncing baby boy. Mavel tov!

Back in May 2011 Missus Rancic told FrontDoor.com that when in Los Angeles she often stays somewhere down in Marina del Rey so it could be the couple only "occupy" this house in Brentwood for filming their reality program and
actually bunk somewhere else. Believe it or not, puppies, this actually sometimes happens in the make-believe
world of reality television. However, there are pap snaps floating around that show the two of them in front of said house in Brentwood—it's identified only as "a friend's house") and there are scads of videos online that show them sitting in the living room (and in the dining room) of said house giving budget party planning tips and marriage advice. There's also a framed photo of the two of them next to the flat-screen tee-vee over the fireplace in the living room of said house in Brentwood and, more circumstantially, a giant letter R standing on a dresser of the master bedroom. Make of all that what you will.

Current listing information shows the white picket fenced residence was originally built in 1941, sits on quarter-plus acre lot and has 2,272 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

It takes but few steps on a brick path to get from a compact driveway at the end of a short cul-de-sace to a puny (but properly-scaled) portico entry. A glass and wood Dutch door—and who does not love a Dutch door?—opens in to a spacious center hall entry where a petite den/office to the left of the entry has built-in book shelves on either side of a bay window. The living roomt runs along the back of the house and features a red brick fireplace, a full wall of built-in cabinets and book shelves, and chocolate-colored hardwood floors that run throughout both floors. A row of multi-paned windows and French doors lead out to a cozy covered porch that spans the full width of the back of the house.

A galley-style eat-in kitchen between the dining room and the attached two car garage has gleaming white cabinets, marble counter tops, the usual complement of high-grade stainless steel appliances and a breakfast nook tucked into yet another, deep bay window.

Two guest/family bedrooms tucked in to the eaves with dormer windows on the second floor share a hall bath while the master suite has a sitting area, second red brick fireplace and an attached bathroom with double sinks, and marble-lined shower somewhat awkwardly set into the steep slant of the roof. It appears from listing photos that at least one of the second floor family/guest bedrooms was pressed in to use as a spacious if not particularly aspirational walk-in closet/dressing room.

Just a sliver of green lawn lies between the brick-floored covered porch that runs the width of the back of the house and the classically aqua-colored swimming pool ringed by a frame of red brick that widens on the far side to comfortably accommodate a outdoor dining table for eight. The house and yard sit on a short bluff that falls off beyond the swimming pool and allows for an expansive, over-the-tree-tops view of the (north)eastern sky.

Mister and Missus Rancic—punishingly-paced peripatetics if there ever were such a thing—are hardly strangers to the real estate game or celebrity property gossip columns. In July of 2007 they shelled out $1,500,000 for a single family townhouse on Chicago's Gold Coast. The 1908 residence was given the ol' Rancic re-do and flipped back on the market and sold at a substantial profit in March of 2009 for $3,595,000. Listing information from the time of the sale shows the 5,460 square foot townhouse has (or had) 3 bedrooms 3.5 poopers,
a complete movie theater, exterior security cameras, radiant heated
floors, a heated 1.5 car garage, and 10 flat screen televisions.

In May of 2009, after more than a year on the market, Missus Rancic sold her Thom Filicia-decorated bachelorette pad in Los Angeles, on the 20th floor of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise, for $725,000. Prop records reveal Missus Rancic picked the place up in January of 2003–when she was still Miss DePandi–for $465,000.

In June of 2009 the vagabonds shelled out $1,185,000 for a foreclosed, high-floor condo in a luxury high rise on Chicago's Magnificent Mile (Michigan Avenue). Less than a year later the Rancic re-did 2 bedroom
and 2.5 pooper aerie was back on the market at $1,650,000. It sold in January 2011 for $1,425,000.

In May 2010 they spent $1,560,000 to buy an extended family accommodating, 8,000 square foot
mansion—or 12,000 square feet, depending on which online resource you consult—in the
upscale Chicago suburb of Hinsdale. When purchased a gut renovation was underway, which Mister and Missus Rancic completed in short order with (according to reports we read) African mahogany front doors, Brazilian cherry wood floors, a basement gym, home theater and cigar and scotch room. They itchy footed reality stars occupied the mansion for just three months before
they flipped the red brick Federal-style pile in February 2011 year for $4,600,000.

We're not exactly sure whether the always to-ing and fro-ing couple plan to settle down with their new baby in Chicago or Los Angeles. It seems almost inconceivable to Your Mama—who does not know a pine nut from a pint of ice cream— they won't always require a real estate toe hold in Los Angeles where Missus Rancic maintains a full-time professional calendar but she's on record as saying she'd rather raise up youngins in Chicago than Los Angeles.

To that end, they were shown in March 2012 on their reality program house hunting in Chicago where they've recently (and sort of randomly) opened up a mid-priced restaurant called RPM Italian. Anyone want to take bets on how long before these hard-charging entrepreneurs start opening up RPM Italians in Los Angeles and Las Vegas? Stranger things have happened.

12 comments:

This house, from the looks of it, must have been designed by a quite well known LA architect who did quite a few of these Cape Cod type cottages that now line the Bel Air streets of Casiano Road and Moraga Drive. You might find out his name, Mama. I forget it.

I believe the Marina Del Rey residence was the condo they lived in prior to moving to this Brentwood home. The house hunting for the new Brentwood lease was featured on their show and led by Million Dollar Listing agent Josh Altman. Andy Cohen just let it slip on Watch What Happens Live last night that Josh had just found them a new house in LA. Josh sheepishly confirmed this but didn't mention if it was a rental or purchase.